The death in Canberra this week of three people in a car driven by a man in his early 20s should have shocked the territory, if not the nation. It was half the toll of last year’s Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race — a toll which occupied the nation’s minds and media space for quite some time.
The photograph of the wrecked car and skid marks would make anyone wonder how could anyone be killed at such a benign place. It is not as if a sudden storm came up, or a tree blew over the road. Even if some other car or pedestrian suddenly came out or a tyre suddenly blew out or some other sudden mechanical defect took place. The sad and obvious conclusion in most car crashes like this is that the driver was going too fast for the conditions.
This accident pushes the ACT’s road toll past last year’s. The ACT now joins NSW and Victoria in that. Together they push Australia’s overall road toll past last year’s, which itself was almost exactly the same as the previous years.
Up to 1997, there had been a steady decline (with some minor glitches) since 1982. It appears that the road toll is sadly levelling out after a long period of decline. Why?
It is difficult in Australia to point to specific events that reduce the road toll, because laws and law-enforcement are different in various states, and even when statistics are taken state by state, some jurisdictions are too small to draw satisfactory conclusions. This week’s ACT accident, for example, on its own accounts for nearly 15 per cent of toll. It would be rash to allow that one event affect general conclusions about, for example, the effectiveness of recently introduced speed cameras. However, some events stand out. Cycle helmets have seen a large reduction in cyclists’ deaths. Reduced deaths have come with lower uniform alcohol rules and in some jurisdictions speed and red-light cameras. Advertising and scare campaigns and demerit and double demerit points have also had a effect.
The question now is whether the present levelling out of the road toll at the 1997 level is about as much as we can hope for. Coming off a high base, like 3500 dead in the 1970s, it might not have taken much to halve the toll. Seat belts, better enforcement, better cars and roads and medical advances were enough to make a very large impact. Making an impact on a smaller base toll might be more difficult. It might be much more difficult to halve the toll again.
Some might even argue that it is possible that we have hit a base level of human stupidity about which nothing further can be done. Or we have hit a base level of convenience and liberty inroads into which the community will not accept.
On the other hand, horrific crashes like the one in Tuggeranong this week seem easily preventable to a mature driver — just drive at a sensible speed.
More can and has to be done. The costs now are still unacceptably high at nearly 1800 lives a year, not to mention the injuries and loss to property. The costs warrant continued (and more) research and continued experiments with enforcement methods and enforcement technology and better driver education.
It is a sad reflection on Australian drivers that it has taken an onslaught of enforcement in the past 20 years to get the toll down: seat belts, random breath testing, speed and red-light cameras and random car inspections. If it takes yellow-line cameras, more cameras and lower speed limits, it will not trouble the safe drivers and might save some people from the bad ones.